No abstract

According to the 2021 amendment to the Juvenile Law of Japan, 18- and 19-year-old offenders are categorized as “specified juveniles,” and the disclosure of their real names to the public is legalized. In the light of this amendment, this study aimed to examine the factors that determine support for real name reporting of specified juveniles. We set up a hypothetical model based on the supposition that support for real name reporting is determined by the perceived importance of juvenile responsibility and rehabilitation, and that these perceptions, in turn, are determined by the perceived seriousness of the consequences of crime. Multilevel structural equation modeling that assumed the individual level (N = 2,591) and the offense type level (N = 60) supported the model at the individual level. However, at the offense level, the relationship between support for real name reporting and the perceived importance of juvenile responsibility and rehabilitation was not significant, rendering partial support for the model.

No abstract

The pivotal topic of the debate regarding criminal code amendment involves expanding the scope of punishable acts to include “sex without consent.” In this context, this study aimed to exploratorily investigate how the public estimates sexual consent, focusing on gender differences. Specifically, 500 respondents were asked to read a scenario depicting two characters in a sexual situation and presented with possible 30 reactions one character could take when she/he was asked to engage in sexual intercourse. Subsequently, they were asked to estimate the degree to which the character consented when she/he had taken a particular reaction. Exploratory factor analysis extracted three factors: explicit nonconsent, implicit nonconsent, and implicit consent. Although three reactions loaded on different factors in female and male samples, a three-factor structure was maintained in the analysis using gender-specific samples. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis revealed no significant differences in the scores of the three factors between the samples. These results suggest that sexual consent/nonconsent has a more complicated graduation than the present debate, and future possible amendments must consider this complication.